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The First Quilt (from start to finish) [Anne's Crafts] This is an early stage of the first quilt. A foam board is propped on a chair, and a quilt pattern cloth is folded on top. This pattern cloth simply has 2 inch squares marked all over it. Then Anne starts pinning 2 inch squares of cloth in the right place, according to her design. This isn't like painting-by-numbers. The cloth comes from all over the place. There's a network of quilters on eBay who exchange squares of cloth and buy and sell these squares of cloth, just so they can get enough variety. The squares are chosen and pinned to the board. It's like those new computer images that are created from small dots that are created by reducing other photos. The squares of cloth are not supposed to match exactly. They are supposed to blend and be colour harmonious when viewed at a distance. I think an exact match would spoil the effect. The design advances. This quilt is suppose to give the effect of looking through a window at a huge flower garden, with the light from the sun bursting through the foliage near the top. The sun effect is created by light shaded squares of cloth in the top centre. Matching the squares to where they should be is a time consuming task. Anne uses a red coloured device that she peers through. I think it's a red filter and it allows her to match the shades of blue and green, so that she gets pleasing matches between adjoining squares. I've seen her rip down a square foot of squares and rebuild them because one square didn't match another. It takes a long time to arrange all the squares for one of these quilts. This is called "giving visual texture". The effect is achieved by using fabrics with different colours, different colour values, and different lines and designs. Finally, all the squares are attached where Anne wants them. The longest part of the quilt-making process is over. The rest takes next to nothing compared to the sorting and matching process. Each square is attached to the backing board with a pin at the top, and hangs loosely from the pin. The quilt is then taken down and all the squares are ironed on to the backing cloth. This sort of fixes them down temporarily. The pins are removed. Then they are all sewn together. This reduces the 2 inch squares of cloth to 1 squares of cloth. At this stage, the quilt is a unified piece of cloth and can be cast aside to pine for finishing. This quilt has a happy ending. It got finished. It acquired a black edge border, and then acquired a rich blue border, a hanging flap at the top, a hanger and it got hung. It's one of the first things you see when you enter the house now. It's quite effective and very pretty.